Miraculous Fishing

Consider the following series of events:

It occurred a week ago in one of the main highways of the country. Around 9pm, a group of bandits stopped the Mercedes in which they were traveling, right in the middle of two lanes of the highway. Next, they set the car on fire, thus blocking the traffic of the highway. People in cars behind them were threatened with rifles. Although no one was hurt, it is easy to imagine a dramatic scene of panic at the highway. Right after that, with the highway clean for them, some of the bandits took two cars and started to chase a money transport truck that was a bit ahead from them. They chased the truck, and by repeatedly shooting at it, managed to force the driver to stop it.

Using sophisticated tools, the group of bandits opened a hole in the left side of the truck and extracted a large amount of money. However, a substantial part of it remained in the truck, mainly because of the armored material of the truck and of the methods the attackers had used. After taking the guns of the money truck, the bandits escaped, although this last part of the events is not very clear for the authorities. Some believe they ran away from the highway by foot, while others claim that some other cars were waiting for them. Independent of this, the authorities' concern about this kind of professional attacks is growing. Indeed, this is not the first time a group of 10-12 young males set a roadblock in a main highway, aiming at 'catching' a money transport vehicle. The same authorities have assured the main members of the band have already been identified, and that police operations to arrest them should give positive results in forthcoming weeks.

As fictional as it may seem, this is not part of an action movie; it's a real story that occurred recently. It didn't occurred in Afghanistan nor Irak. Not even in Colombia, where attacks of this kind, called miraculous fishings, were very common some years ago. You can read about such a modality of fishing here.

No. The above story occurred in Italy, in northern Italy to be more precise. It was in the north direction of the A14 autostrada, which connects Bologna to towns like Imola. I was very surprised when I first heard the story, and it felt weird to see how things that were common in Colombia are starting to occur here in Italy. Of course, it's not like Italy's infrastructure is under guerrilla attacks, but I find this miraculous fishing in Europe (well, Italy) simply unacceptable. If this kind of things is already happening, what's next?

We already knew the line that differentiates Italy from third-world countries is disturbingly fuzzy. Now we know that line it's getting thinner and thinner.